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mojotoad
Great node, [George_Sherston|George], and thanks for the reference, [demerphq].
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My name is the result of a confluence of events. I was quitting a long term job and in the process of setting up a corporation-independent identity on the Net. Up until that point I mostly used my initials, 'mps', usually associated with my job (other than some BBS-era adventures as Wang Dang Doodle, etc). As a part of this process I decided to grab my own domain name.
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I'd always been an avid mountain biker, but for nigh ten years I had been slogging along on the frankenstein remnants of a Schwinn High Sierra -- a bike that was okay in its day, back when the sport was still defining itself. I didn't know much about the "sport" at the time, as off-road biking was simply a natural extension of my days as a kid tooling around the Alabama trails and streets with the other neighborhood hooligans on my Mongoose BMX. Well, part mud & creek, part D&D excursions, transport was transport. Within those creeks and crannies, though, I was always on the lookout for any sort of creature I could find...snakes, salamanders, crawfish, frogs, lizards, toads, you name it. In particular I was fairly enthralled with the whole toad thing.
<p>So, later in life, I rode the living hell out of that Schwinn High Sierra; over time, the only original part left was the frame and one sprocket. During this same time I belatedly gathered a heavy appreciation for blues and roots music with stints in Nashville and Houston, not to mention an appreciation most other sorts of music. Hence I had songs about mojo's running in my head (yes, Doors too).
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About the time I was going through this migration to independence on the net, I rewarded myself with a treat. A wonderful <a href="http://www.mojotoad.com/adventure/b_2.html">steel-framed Ibis Mojo</a> painted in an alarming, but gorgeous toad-green color. (picture circa 1997)
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When casting around for domain names, five years ago or so (pre <em>Austin Powers II</em> and it's shameful abuse of the word mojo), all of it -- the toads, the blues, the need for a name -- swirled around the catalyst of my new green bike. Up from the subconscious it hopped: Mojotoad.
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So after establishing the domain name, it was only a matter of time before it was adopted as my online moniker as well.
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Glad to be here, fellow monks. After more than a year of travel hiatus, it's good to be back.
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Matt
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P.S. For the morbidly curious, if you are into mountain bikes and want to learn more about how much of a dog the Schwinn High Sierra was, there is a <a href="http://www.firstflightbikes.com/schwinn1.htm">compulsive mountain bike catalogue collector</a> out there. 1987 model. That should tell you why it was so heavily modified over the years, in the quest for hacked improvement of design.
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